10.09.2014

A Country Drive, Moroccan Style





                         





Since it's 'Throwback Thursday' I thought I would post a few photos from my trip this past summer since I didn't post many when it was actually happening. On my second day in Morocco I hired a driver to take me to a few places outside of Fez. The first stop was Volubilis - a city of Roman ruins that had been excavated in the past fifty years, circa 100 AD. I was lucky as it was a very moody day weather wise and hardly anyone was there. It allowed me to really soak in the landscape that would have not occured with busloads of tourists.  The landscape itself was amazingly gorgeous too - as you can see -lot's of rolling grassy hills and a wide expanse of sky with the Middle Atlas mountains in the distance. I hired a guide to explain all of the ruins to me. He was very cute, he kept advising me precisely where  I should stand so as to get the perfect composition with my photos. Also on this outing was a visit to the small city of Méknes, it's souk of which was dedicated a Unesco Wold Heritage Site and Moulay Idriss - a beautiful white washed city. My driver did not speak a word of English but we shared dates and almonds and at one point he pulled over the car, jumped out and and returned with a branch of raw chickpeas that he had picked. It was a lovely day.

10.07.2014

Not Your Grandmother's Macrame







Out of nowhere I suddenly became obsessed with tufty things, weaving, macrame and any sort of odd textural wall hanging. I think it started with Moroccan wedding blankets. A friend asked me to bring one back from Morocco and I didn't care much for them a year ago but they really grew on me with their mixture of metallics, soft cotton and fringe. When I got back I noticed Etsy was featuring quite a few different wall hangings in their promo emails and then bam! suddenly they are appearing all over the net and I want one, bad!  I've featured a few examples above of some of my favourites, I think the weirder and bigger the better. I also love when other elements from nature are incorporated, pieces of driftwood or metal. I'm imagining one above my bed that takes up half the wall with lot's of long cream threads with bits of metallic woven in and bits of driftwood. I am even considering making one myself. I found this tutorial if you want to try your own hand at it:



If you'd like to find the source of any of these images I made this Pinterest board where you can find all of these images and more that link back to their original sources. What do you think about this trend?